The Rundown

• How to Manufacture Luck

• The Top Five Tried-And-True Lessons For Building And Scaling A Successful Business

• Want to achieve a big goal? You need to leverage dopamine

• How to Turn Your Smartphone Into a Dumb Phone

• OpenAI’s new model is better at reasoning and, occasionally, deceiving

• Add this book to your reading list

Your bulletproof 90-day plan to move your needle forward:

Give me just 1 week and MINUTES per day. This system is evidence-based to work with YOUR brain.

Join this fun bash event and come together with fellow business owners moving their business forward.

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By the end of this event you will have:

• Set your “move the needle forward goal” for the next 90 days.

• A bulletproof plan that fits the way your brain works to ensure success.

• The drive and motivation to make it happen.

🔥Quote/Prompt

Use the quote as a writing or thinking prompt to finish your week strong.

A bit from mine:

(posted in our Doer Entrepreneurs Free Community — off social media)

Did someone forward this to you?

📈 Performance

How to Manufacture Luck

The host of one of my favorite podcasts (How I Built This) always asks his business owner guests what portion of their success is hard work and what is luck. And I always find the answers interesting. Inevitably almost everyone says some version of both. This article lines up nicely with those answers. And it’s a must-read for all of us. I struggled to choose an excerpt because of the way the article is laid out. I really recommend reading this in full — seriously. Here is my reluctant excerpt:

The Paradox of Planning

And herein lies our paradox: in a world where every moment is cataloged and every experience rated, how do we create space for genuine spontaneity? I mean, the very notion of "planning" for serendipity seems ridiculous and contradictory. Yet, in our overscheduled lives, it has become necessary.

The challenge extends well beyond travel. Even connecting with friends now requires squeezing into 30- or 60-minute slots, sometimes months in advance. We're trapped in a data and technology smog that underscores the need for intentional spontaneity.

As much as digital signals guide us, they also threaten to limit us, to confine our experiences within the bland boundaries of what's been determined relevant, popular, or plain easy.

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⚙️ Optimization

The Top Five Tried-And-True Lessons For Building And Scaling A Successful Business

One thing I think many of us do too late is set our mission & north star. But it’s really what serves as the filter for the whole business. And this section below agrees but all 5 tips are worth the read. If you are a Doers Member, check out this course to build your alignment. Excerpt from the article below.

Strategic alignment

“Every resource – human, financial, and material – must be aligned with a consistent strategy” according to Zhao. “As we scaled, I understood that every aspect of the business from budgeting to marketing, needed to be strategically aligned. This meant ensuring that everyone, from top management to entry level employees, was on the same page regarding our goals and how to achieve them.”

⏲️ Time Management

Want to achieve a big goal? You need to leverage dopamine

Oh man is this article my jam! Time management is honestly less about minutes, hours, etc. and more about our brains than you might think. Manage dopamine effectively and suddenly you’re a time management ninja. Manage ineffectively and it seems like nothing is getting done. Excerpt below.

“You can be intentional with dopamine,” says Fletcher. “It’s a tool that’s available to anyone. Every time we take a moment and acknowledge our effort, we realize that we’re laying a bit of a foundation toward achieving a bigger goal.”

Align dopamine with your values

While dopamine can keep you motivated, sustained success takes something more, Fletcher says, noting that high-performing athletes and coaches anchor their goals in their values, which creates the dynamic drive process.

“Sadly, when we don’t anchor our pursuit of better with something bigger and broader in our purpose and in our values, the result is often regret and unintentional misalignment with the things in our lives that matter most,” she says. “I’ll ask folks, ‘What are you chasing?’ Because if a sole focus is on achievement, it leaves people feeling empty.”

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💻 Tools & Technology

How to Turn Your Smartphone Into a Dumb Phone

Have you considered buying a “light phone” or even just having two phones to escape distractions? Well this article helps you turn your current smart phone into a “Dump phone”. I am a big fan of dumb devices or single-use devices because it helps keep us focused. Check out this article if you’re curious and remember, you can always revert your phone! Excerpt is the article intro — see full article for the instructions.

When the smartphone era began with the launch of the first iPhone in 2007 and the App Store a year later, part of the thrill of these devices was the sheer number of things they could do. Nearly two decades on, having a constantly distracting gadget that can do everything doesn't seem like quite such a good idea.

Some people have been turning back to feature phones to escape social media, instant messaging, and an endless barrage of content (now produced by AI as well as human beings). There are even dedicated phones built to stick to the basics, keeping useful features like driving directions and photo-taking, while ditching a lot of the noise and distraction that usually comes with a smartphone. But there’s no need to buy a new device to achieve dumb-phone zen; by installing some apps and tweaking some of your phone’s settings, you can slow the data deluge and reclaim some brain cycles.

If you're ready for a quieter life and keen to dumb down your smartphone, here's how to go about it on an iPhone or an Android device. These options are more comprehensive than simply uninstalling all your apps and turning off all your notifications, though you can certainly consider taking those steps too.

🤖 AI

OpenAI’s new model is better at reasoning and, occasionally, deceiving

This section is typically all about keeping up with the changes happening with AI and this is an important one! We already know that these models hallucinate but that implies it doesn’t know what it is saying is false. What if it that isn’t the case? Excerpt below.

The behavior Apollo Research is testing for — “hallucinations” and “deception” in OpenAI’s safety card — happens when a model generates false information even though it has reason to infer the information might be incorrect. For instance, the report says that in about 0.38 percent of cases, the o1-preview model provides information its chain of thought indicates is likely false, including fake references or citations. Apollo Research found that the model might fabricate data instead of admitting its inability to fulfill the request​.

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👀 Read, Watch, Listen

This week’s awesome books, YouTube videos, newsletters, etc. to add to your list!

Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork (Book)

This is one of my favorite books for freelancers and solopreneurs because our default mindset is usually “how” — we take a course on how to make a website vs hiring someone to do it, for example. This is not always the wrong solution but this book REALLY helps you check when you should hire and when you should buy that course. Every business owner should read this. I know plenty of 7-figure plus CEOs with a team who still struggle with this.

From Amazon:

This book will teach you how to make this essential paradigm-shift so you can:

* Build a successful business effectively while not killing yourself
* Immediately free-up 1,000+ hours of work that you shouldn't be doing anyway
* Bypass the typical scarcity and decline of aging and other societal norms
* Increase your vision in all areas of life and build teams of WHOs to support you in that vision
* Never be limited in your goals and ambitions again
* Expand your abundance of wealth, innovation, relationships, and joy
* Build a life where everything you do is your choice--how you spend your time, how much money you make, the quality of your relationships, and the type of work you do

🎉 Celebration Corner

Every week Doers Inner Circle members do a weekly review & get help when they need it — check out the progress they made this week!

• I got through a fair amount of what I wanted done

• I wrote a motivational letter to myself. Not very useful for marketing, but it's a start.

• I actually did write took a 25 mins' time to write something.

• I did pretty well with SM and substituted them with Audible.

• Sales & marketing session done for main business

• Did posting on Threads and my newsletter.

• I got a lot of views on some of my Threads posts and got 25 new newsletter subscribers.

• I published a new tricky blog article.

• I booked a seat at a coworking space for next week Thursday to spice up my work environment.

What did you do this week? We feature non-member successes too. Just post them here!

🔒Inner Circle: Events & Announcements

• NEW: 90-Day Planning Formula kicks off Monday.  RSVP here

• Announcement: Submit books for Book Club RSVP here

• Monday: {EU Time} Work ON Business. Theme: 5️⃣ Finances RSVP here

• Tuesday: Work ON Business. Theme: 5️⃣ Finances RSVP here

• Monday/Friday: Goal Setting + Plan Your Week Party

• Bonus: Extra Goal Setting Workshop Thursday Sept. 26: RSVP here

• Accelerators: September 27 is your Monthly Goal Setting Workshop RSVP here

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I hope you found this valuable!

Wishing you much productivity!

- Jenae :)